Spirits of Time
by IcePrincess777
Summary: Sequel to Plague and third in the series "Death is Never the End". Someone, or something is changing the past. Someone never meant to see the future they've created.
1. When Eternity Ends Heaven

To all those who read Plague.I know it sucked but I needed it for an English and History project. And to move the plot along to this. I still don't own Nny, Devi, Tenna, Squee, Pepito, Elize or anyone else I don't own but forgot to mention. This story is the sequel to Plague (sequel to Tomorrow Comes Today) and third in the series "Death is Never the End" so you should probably read those first to get what's going on here. By now I've abandoned all hope of this being true to the original plot the way it was supposed to in the beginning. Now it's more of a JTHM meets sci-fi story. But enough talk, on with the story.  
  
Spirits of Time  
  
Chapter 1: When Eternity Ends  
  
"Johnny C.? I know you're awake. You're not going back, you know." Johnny opened his eyes to the same place from which he had been sent back to Earth twice before. "I know." His face was blank, but inside he was grinning. It was over now. No more confusion, no more voices, no more drama. He knew he wasn't going to Heaven to be all content and stuff with the chair people and head explody powers, but whatever this was, it had to be better than what he left.  
  
"I think you set a record for the number of times dying within the time span of six months!"  
  
"I know I'm not going back, but why?"  
  
"Well, the aforementioned record for one. Why have someone that dies every other week when you could have someone that lasts at least a little longer? And don't worry about who will replace you. We've already taken care of that. She seems similar enough to you to do just as well a job of killing off those who never took advantage of the fact that their minds had evolved past the mental capacity of Neanderthals. If they didn't give me the wrong information as a joke again, I think her name is Devi D."  
  
"Devi? She's alive?"  
  
"Well yeah. You needed a replacement and she already had voices forming."  
  
"So if I'm not going back, what am I doing?"  
  
"You're staying here. I suggest going to the lower plane, it has quite a view. Especially around midnight. Just don't take advantage of the opportunity to disturb the living, you might get stuck on Earth as a ghost."  
  
"Nny went to the lower plane out of a lack of anything better to do. He could go on a killing spree in Hell, but he wasn't in the mood. After all, he would have all of eternity to do that sort of thing. If nothing else, the lower plane was a sight more beautiful and complex than anything on Earth. Everything around him was a swirling mass of light gray and purple except for one wall. The wall facing outward was almost transparent. There was only a wall of wind going at seemingly hundreds of miles per hour blocking him from visions of the living world.  
  
"So.who should I check on first?"  
  
**********************************************************************  
  
It was a dark and stormy Halloween night. Squee, Melanie and Pepito ran to Todd's house for shelter after a violent thunderstorm interrupted their Trick or Treating. Squee's mom didn't notice. His dad just said to quit having frat parties in the house. After they had eaten enough candy to rot out ten sets of teeth, they decided to play truth or dare. Melanie had to get on the roof and scream "KIWIS ARE RABID AND LEMONS WILL EAT YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!!!"  
  
Pepito had to listen to the entire Britney CD without screaming in agony as his brain melted and his eardrums exploded. Not that it really happened, but you get the picture. "Okay, your turn Squee. Truth or dare? And don't pick truth again. I can only ask you what your favorite color is so many times."  
  
"Okay.dare. Just promise you won't do anything with sponges! They're scaaary!!" "And a method of birth control on Seinfeld. Hmm..let's see.."  
  
"Oh! I've got a good one!", Melanie shrieked as her eyes brightened with a sinister glare. "I dare you to wake the dead!"  
  
"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  
  
"Do you have a Ouija board?"  
  
"Yeah. Last time I used it someone named Drew said he lived in the refrigerator. The cold froze his brain."  
  
"Let's just hope the reincarnation of the ice cream doesn't answer again." Squee dug around in his closet and pulled out a box and took out a board covered with letters, numbers and suns and moons with yes and no written in them. Next to it was an oddly shaped thing with a magnifying glass in the middle. He put the glass in the middle of the board and they each put a finger on it.  
  
"What should I ask it?"  
  
"Ask them for their name."  
  
"Okay. So what's your name?" A cool breeze swept through the room and the thermometer on the wall moved slowly but steadily down to more than ten degrees below normal. The magnifying glass moved across the board to spell out "Don't you know?" "So do I know you?"  
  
"No one really knows me. I don't know a lot about myself. But you know me." Squee thought about who it could be. His mommy and daddy were alive and he had no friends really except Pepito and Melanie. But they were right next to him. He hadn't seen the scary neighbor man since March, but he hadn't seen him very often before that either. Was it one of the bullies at school who played Russian Roulette? Or was it that old man from the alleyway behind the mall? What if it was.no. It couldn't be Grandpa. He finally died last month when he swallowed his fake teeth and tried to get them out by exploding them with pop rocks and soda. Then he died of natural causes, or semi-natural causes in his case. The sentence preceding that has absolutely nothing to do with the story.  
  
"Are they really a ghost? Ask them how many people are in this room", Melanie said with a hint of boredom in her voice.  
  
"How many people are in this room, Mr. or Mrs. Spooky dead ghosty person?"  
  
"7."  
  
They all stared at the number for a second, then ran out of the room screaming at the top of their little lungs.  
  
(A/N: The ghost named Drew who lived in the refrigerator and the seven people in the room when there were only three counting him really happened to me! Not that anyone cares, just thought it might be interesting.) 


	2. Bring Me to Life

It's been a while since I updated this, and I apologize. I found the remnants of this story when going through last years notebooks and decided to take a stab at finishing it. I don't own stuff as usual. Just Melanie.  
  
Chapter 2:Bring Me to Life  
  
It was eleven PM before they convinced themselves it was safe to go back into the room. The storm had since stopped and the clouds were now swirling overhead like the walls of lower hell. After one last dare, Pepito ate a cherry bomb, which obviously didn't explode because his saliva put out the fuse. Yay! The kids have finally learned something in science class!  
  
Then they went to sleep. The clock in the hall chimed twelve times as the mass of clouds cleared from the sky, letting the light of the full moon shine on the Ouija board in the middle of Squee's bedroom. If it's not Nny coming in the window, it's the power of the supernatural. Why doesn't he just get some curtains? But that's another story. This tranquil scene was in sharp contrast with everything that was going on in Hell.  
  
"DARN YOU GOPHERS!! I didn't know there would be any gophers down here. This must be Hell or something." An old man with a cane and hardly any teeth left ran by and accidentally hit Nny.  
  
"OW!! You are in Hell, by the way. And if you weren't already dead, you would be right now."  
  
"Oh.that would explain a lot. But it's almost midnight. I have to go back now and get me some kiddy meats! Where were you going to?"  
  
"Going? What's the point if it's all the same postpartum wasteland?"  
  
"You're depressing. In my day we didn't use all those big words like if and the. Scuse me, I've got some haunting to do! Wheee!!!"  
  
The gray swirling of the ceiling halted, then cleared. Through it there was another kind of swirling, hotter than the sun it seemed. It was fiery yellow-orange and rotating ever so slowly around them. Then the vision shot upward, through the Earth's core, to the cooler mantle, through the layer where the crust meets the magma on which the continents float, up through the rocks and dirt and into a basement with a hole in the side, finally slowing and stopping in a room lit only by the moon. Three masses were visible breathing, asleep around a board in the center.  
  
The old man climbed up the rocky wall and into the room, where he became invisible except in the bright light of the moon.  
  
"What could he want there?", Nny thought. He knew there was something familiar about that room, but he couldn't put a finger on it. Did one of those kids have horns? No, it was probably just his imagination or the poor lighting.  
  
Another one rolled over in his sleep, mumbling something. "No Shmee, I don't want to torture the other kids with pepper spray and water guns filled with acid. That would be mean."  
  
"Squee?!" the old man screamed, but apparently not enough to fully waken anyone. The old man was drooling, zombie like over Squee. Nny was stuck in the indescision to go up and visit his little friend. His eyes lit up, temporarily forgetting the awkwardness of being a ghost. He laid his hands on the rocky walls leading up to the room, almost losing himself in the cool vapor that seemed neither liquid nor gas. Or any other describable type of matter he had ever felt. It was beautiful, yet frightening. But that could have come from not exactly being alive. But greater than the fear of the unknown was his comfort in the odd, but familiar and distant feel of walking on a cloud in a dream. Who knows the last time he had slept. The distance in time only made the distance in feeling more difficult to recall. But it was still somehow possible.  
  
"And now..hehe.", the old man cackled with a glazed expression. "It's time to do something I should have done along time ago."  
  
Nny began to ascend the wall when he paused in the middle. "would Squee want me there?", he whispered to himself, too soft to be clearly audible or wake anyone above him. "All I could do is make things more complicated for him." He remembered all of the events of the past year or so. At least he thought it was. With all of these round trip tickets to hell, his concept of time was beginning to lack accuracy. But of what he did remember, his presence and influence had only served to harm Squee. And that was the last thing he wanted to do. Yes, he should just stay there. There was a future that lay ten years ahead of him that had to be prevented. He still wasn't sure whether he really was there, if it was a dream, or just some weird vision he had as a result of being knocked out in that car accident back in November. Stan had been taken care of to the extent of his knowledge. Probably off stealing shiny car guy's car or something. But what good would come of him going back? He had a feeling the time this tunnel would be open was limited. " No, no. I won't go back. But if I have the time, I would just like to say goodbye. It's the least I could do to lessen the effects of any post traumatic stress disorder he may have picked up."  
  
He remembered from his dream, or half awake state, he still wasn't sure what it was, that Squee could have, he should have grown up differently than what happened there. If only someone was there for him.  
  
"Geez. This old man is crazier than I am", Nny said as he ascended the half fluid wall, only a few steps from the top. He put his hand on the hard wooden floor, feeling all of its familiar crevices from all those times he had hid under Squee's bed when someone came into the room. But he also felt a slimy, slippery liquid goo. "Is that drool?"  
  
No answer.  
  
"Helloooooo? Are you there?"  
  
Still no answer. Just insane cackling. Nny tried to heave himself over the wall and onto the floor, but his boot was stuck in something.  
  
"Could you give me a hand? I'm kind of stuck here."  
  
As irony would have it, a hand is precisely what he got. A bloody hand covered in spots and wrinkles with metal for bones slid its way along the drool covered floor and to the edge of the tunnel, then fell over the edge, pieces of metal where a skeleton should have been shining in the moonlight until it fell down where there wasn't any light besides the fire below that consumed it as it hit the bottom.  
  
"Get off me! Get off me!", the old man screamed, falling to the ground with a resounding thud.  
  
"Leave Todd alone!", an unknown, high pitched voice yelled.  
  
"Eww..old person blood."  
  
Nny saw a little girl standing over the old man with an extremely grossed out look on her face as he lunged over the edge, presumably to get away from her. He fell down, knocking Nny and making his hands lose their already slippery grip on the floor. The old man fell down, screaming in the way that sounds like it's just a 20 year old doing a bad voice impersonation of an old man. Then came a more authentic scream. You know. Like those ones where someone's possessing you and finally decides to take their mental garbage elsewhere. Except for some reason they have to make it really painful. What was I talking about again? Does this even have anything to do with the story? I don't know. That's the amusing part.  
  
"Where was I again? Oh no. This can't be good." He's been falling for an unusually long time. Want to know what happens when and android thingy goes splat?  
  
*SPLAT* *burns*  
  
Same thing that happens when anything else falls down into the center of the earth and burns up from the incredibly high temperature, then goes even deeper back to the hell from which it came. If that makes any sense whatsoever.  
  
Nny was still hanging on the wall, upside down since his lodged shoe was the only thing that kept him from going splat like the old guy. This wasn't at all what he had planned. He thought that he would be able to just go back down without that whole splat and burn thing.  
  
"But wait," he thought. "How could that girl not go through him and how could he go splat unless."  
  
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I'M ALIVE AGAIN!!!!!!!", he shouted out loud.  
  
"Eep! Who's that now?!", squealed an immature voice that Nny remembered all too well. "Squee? Is that you?"  
  
"Yes. Where are you?"  
  
"Hanging by my foot above a big, firey pit of doom. I wouldn't mind falling in again if it didn't mean risking meeting that creepy old cannibal again. Do you have a chain or monkeys or dirty socks or something I could grab onto?"  
  
He felt his feet being unhooked from the wall and lifted so he was left standing on the ground beside the hole.  
  
"Hello. I never thought Satanic powers would be useful for anything but burning people's faces off with fiery acid, but then again I've been wrong about other things. Like the number of pup music fans I could possibly hypnotize with subliminal messages. Hehe.. your shirt isn't tiny enough.that was fun." Pepito chuckled evilly, reacalling a time when his least favorite pop star came to town.  
  
*Flashback Panel*  
  
Pepito sits in the sound booth in the back of an extremely large arena, playing a tpae under the high pitched squealing from the stage and laughing maniacally while dancing on the back of the sound techie. The techie is barely conscious on the floor and his ears are oozing blood. He's mumbling something about "Oww..my solar plexus.."  
  
*No techies were harmed during the making of this flashback panel. End Flashback Panel*  
  
"Don't I remember you?"  
  
"Yes, I remember seeing you a few months ago. Really I never expected you to be alive again right now. If it were anyone else that escaped father would have incinerated them before they got even this far. But it's not like he really has a lot of control over these things."  
  
"Then what about the weird cannibal guy?"  
  
"He never told you? He was a waste lock like yourself. There have been a lot of those dying lately for some reason. But no matter. They can always be returned or replaced by family members. But it can be so annoying having to explain all those strange incidences to them in the afterlife."  
  
"But is there any way I can get back down without having to shoot myself in the head or drown again? That's not exactly a pleasant experience."  
  
"You could have about ten seconds ago. The hole behind you just closed up if you haven't noticed."  
  
"Crap." 


	3. Down With The Sickness

I'm developing an obsession with naming stories and titles after songs. Oh well. At least I don't look up people's phone numbers that live on the other side of the country just so I can use the school payphone to make phony child support claims as prank calls. You know who you are. XD. Anyway, I do not own these characters in case you've read 20 or so chapters of 2 and (insert fraction here) stories and still haven't figured that out. Don't I get all the bright readers?  
  
Chapter 3: Down With the Sickness  
  
"Sickness, you seem awfully glum today.", Devi commented snidely to her doll which had strangely developed screws for eyes. "And stop stealing my screws! I need those!" "It's none of your concern. A slight flaw in our plans, but an obstacle that can easily be overcome. Don't worry about the screws. You won't need them anyway."  
  
Devi thought she saw the painted doll try to move, to push through its boundaries to prove its point. But it must have been some illusion with origins in her imagination. AT least it was active again. With a control other than the ever mounting illustrations that had been sucking more and more of her energy as they went. This painting was going nowhere at the moment. The next impossible task was fitting monkeys into a picture with two fire breathing dragons wreaking havoc on a small planet. There weren't even any creatures mildly resembling monkeys in the story. But the scared little author was not going to change anything about that. Stinking Nerve.  
  
In her absentmindedness, the strokes where the monkey was supposed to be instead resembled a freak of nature combination of a person and an unusually large stick. It had an expression somewhere between sadistic glee and pure insanity, pleased at seeing his knife pierce the dragon's thick, scaly navy purple skin.  
  
"Grrr. Nny, how many times are you going to ruin my paintings?"  
  
It could always be painted over. But why didn't she want to? She got up and took her brushes to the closest sink, in her bathroom to wash them off.  
  
If she had the ability to move, Sickness would have shaken in her painting.  
  
"Don't remember. Please don't remember."  
  
******************************************************  
  
Red morning light crept over the floorboards and onto Nny. The color shone through his eyelids. He didn't have the energy to be pissed at himself for sleeping, though he wantd to get up instead of wondering if he was really alive or not. At last a speck of blood on the window had provided a temporary shadow for his eyes.  
  
"Ah, such fond memories. Why is it that the only way something can remain eternally beautiful is if it is destroyed before decay can occur?" He remembered all of them, how they made him smile and for a brief moment think that he was worth something more than just a way to dispose of everyone too stupid to live. Though they produced athe same feelings of exaggerated contentment they were all beautiful in their own ways. Some tried to fight, but collapsed in a pool of broken bones and blood soon enough. His fingers traced their way along a scar on his arm. That one had mixed emotions attached to it.  
  
"Devi", he recalled her name. She might not have had one for all the difference it would have made. Her fate would have been the same. "The one that."  
  
Johnny's head spun as if he had been rotating on some invisible roller coaster. Past, present and expectations of the future all blurred and blended with each other, pleading for their unanswered calls of unconsciousness. The skin on his arm began to tingle, burning in peculiar yet not completely painful way. He could see next to nothing through the whirlpool or his line of vision. But the scar seemed to blend into its surroundings and become less than usually visible to him.  
  
Then, as quickly as it had come, the dizziness passed. He was not sure how, but it had definitely left its mark. Or more accurately a lack of one. The scar o his arm had somehow disappeared, to be replaced by a new but considerably aged blood stain on the floor beneath the doorway to Johnny's seldom used bedroom.  
  
Something told him that the night had been different than what his memories allowed him to recall. But he knew that he could not have possibly hallucinated something so realistic with so much evidence of it authenticity.  
  
*Flashback Panel. Again. Get used to it. It's going to happen a lot.*  
  
Johnny had just blown what would have been the gushy, slobbery, disgustingly sweet romance scene in a movie. In other words I would be in the restrooms puking like the little girl from The Exorcist. Or laughing if it was making anyone else cry. Anyway, the doughboys were yelling at him both for walking out and for not killing Devi sooner.  
  
"Just face it. You'll never be happy. NEVER!! End it while you still can without looking like a bigger doofus than you already are!"  
  
"Quit telling me what to do! You both say you think I'll be better off following you, but you both just want it for yourselves.! Why don't you just SHUT UP!?!?"  
  
Something behind him rattled, presumably the door handle and Devi trying to get in. "Johnny? Are you okay? Where did you go?", Devi called from behind the door. He picked up a single weapon, preparing to greet her when she did come through the door. *Click*  
  
The door opened and Devi stepped through, only to be greeted with a knife in the face. The look of absolute shock and horror on her face was greater than the one on Johnny's. But only by so much. Psychodoughboy laughed behind Nny. Devi, seeing the little streams of blood drip down past her wide open eyes, lifted her finger to her nose, giving the blood something else to drip down on. She swayed as her center of balance shifted with the end of its use, finally falling to the ground.  
  
"F you Psycho. I wanted to do that!"  
  
*End Flashback Panel*  
  
******************************************************  
  
"The one that never got away."  
  
"This is good!", the slightly less separated voice that might have once been Eff tried to lighten the situation with its almost irritating optimism. "It never went bad! You got what you've always wanted! You immortalized the moment!"  
  
"No. This isn't it."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"The moment is immortalized. But not at all in the way I wanted." 


	4. Resurection

Warning: Trying to type three one to two thousand word chapters at 11:30 at night can have negative side affects such as the inability to fill this space with anything mildly creative. I still don't own these characters.  
  
Chapter 4: Resurection  
  
Somewhere other than the place the story just left off….  
  
If you're at all like the people in this little fairytale gone horribly wrong, I assume you're wondering who I am. No, I am not Johnny, nor Sickness, Devi, the one who has presented this story in a format that would allow her to communicate it to you, nor almost anyone else you might be able to think of. I'm not saying that I make no appearances in any of the characters' lives, but I seldom make myself known to them. Or anyone else for that matter. Look twice and you might find me. Odds are it will be the first thing you see. And the last place you look, unless you are REALLY stupid and keep looking after you find me.  
  
But enough about me, your prime interests are in the role I play in the story. Let me take you to a place beyond the physical world. The mind and spirit can be powerful things, both magnificent and malicious in their workings. Especially when they are no longer attached to a body.   
  
"Traitor."  
  
"Oh. Hello. I was wondering when you would come."  
  
"Why wonder when you caused it?"  
  
"Follow your own advice and stop taking things so literally."  
  
"Shut up already. You promised nothing would go wrong and then you ended up robbing me of my host!"  
  
"I never promised anything. I only said you could use it to your advantage."  
  
"How is this to my advantage?! How am I supposed to do anything near completing my task WITHOUT A FREAKING BODY TO USE?!?!"  
  
"That's your problem. If you'll excuse me, I'm going back now."  
  
"Fuck you. Up the ass. With a crowbar."  
  
"That's how I like it."  
  
**********************************************************   
  
Dear DIEary,  
  
This is getting weird. I could have sworn that Devi beat me up and ran away when I trid to kill her, but everything tells me that she's dead. I don't know why this should matter so much to me, she would just join the rest of them in a plethora of fond memories, but it does matter. Something about it feels wrong that never felt anything but joyous normalcy with all of the others.   
  
Maybe I should stop thinking about this. Creeping oneself out if almost a sure sign of a deepening descent into madness. I've got to go now. The fresh screams in the basement need tending to.  
  
Tenna stood facing a door bearing the number of the room it led to. The hallway was relatively dark with only a few dim bluish lights providing luminescence.   
  
"Why did I come here again?"  
  
She didn't really know the creepy new people who lived in the room that Devi had once occupied. But for some reason she came up to their door.   
  
"Oh well. Probably just some bout of overwhelmingly immense grief that will someday push me over the edge and into mass homicide. Let's go Spooky!"  
  
*squeak* 


	5. Always

News flash: My lack of a life has led me to type another chapter because I'm procrastinating and don't want to do my history or science projects. I still don't own any of the characters in this chapter. You wouldn't want to sue me anyway. I have nothing of value besides maybe a techno mixer CD. But someone's borrowing it so you can't have that either.  
  
Chapter 5: Always  
  
Sickness was obviously no problem to deal with. The other players in this extensive board game of memories and events shouldn't be too hard to either re program or silence eternally. Spirits can be incredibly destructive mentally and metaphysically, but the cool thing is they can't do anything destructive unless they act through the living. THAT is what I intend to do.  
  
My most recent host is a perfect specimen for what I aim to accomplish. Taking over his mind was absolutely no problem at all. The fact that there was almost nothing in it certainly helped. I should pick up victims at high school football games more often. Artists provide much more creative and untraceable methods of wreaking havoc than normal people. But it is necessary to quiet and control all of their thoughts before it is possible to possess anyone. And creativity makes that so incredibly time consuming and difficult. If I wasn't already doing something of the nature, I could just do mass mind control of cheerleaders and football players. No, wait. Pop stars already do that.  
  
But I digress. It was so boring to wait through half of a football game while my host ran around in a field wearing tights and tackling other guys for a ball. Then he followed his friends outside and called Johnny, or Nny as he prefers to be called, several homophobic insults that set him off into one of his infamous killing sprees. My victim was dragged into Nny's car trunk, then to the basement where he came down every few hours both to tell my victim to shut up and to torture everyone else in the endlessly extensive basement. I had only seen two rooms of it, but the sound echoed throughout the upper rooms and the hallway…thing leading out of the room. It was most likely a hallway. But for a hallway it was covered with a lot of dirt and blood and bodies and…eugh…. You get the picture. All that was left to do was to wait until my presence in this house could be made useful.  
  
I must admit that it was rather lonely waiting down there on what was probably the bottom floor with only one or two other hostages and my host to keep me company. But I couldn't even talk to them, or risk being discovered. They always try to fight it when that happens. Always. (The one word in here that makes the chapter title at all relevant.) It would seem that outside control would be nothing new or particularly dislikeable to him. He looked, thought and acted so much like the "friends" he surrounded himself with. But human instincts are such confusing things. There's something in them that fears only supernatural control that isn't derived from some sort of god. But loneliness was nothing new to me, so patience triumphed in the end.  
  
I sensed that something both good for me, but bad for my greater plan would happen soon. So I had to act fast to do what I needed to do. When Nny came into my room, I used what little physical strength I had to take the key to the chains that bound my host's wrists and ankles out of his pocket, and later that night to put them into the locks. I made sure my victim was in a complete trance before slipping the locks off his limbs and leading him up the stairs and into a room about ten or so levels up. A miniature lightning bolt of static blue-white ran along a metal bar that suspended my target from the wall by his arms.  
  
"But momee! I want to go to the fair tomorrow!", he whined, much like the way a five year old would if he wasn't the center of attention.   
  
His eyes were half open and glazed over with asymmetrically dilated pupils from electric shock. He gave a violent twitch as his hand touched the bar and sent another tiny shock wave running along it.  
  
I moved my host's hand with the key to the lock on this man's chains. The static broke his trance briefly, but his zombie like state was thankfully regained before he could ascertain what was going on. I heard a thumping noise from above me. At first I figured it was probably just the wall that Nny had been talking about before. But out of the corner of my host's eye, I saw that behind me, not above me was the blood covered wall that psycho had been talking about to my victim. So the only other thing it could be was footsteps. And the only other pair of legs in this house besides mine that weren't bound by chains were Nny's.  
  
Several obscenities ran through my thoughts as the sound grew louder, closer, giving me even less time. I unlocked the chains on the man's hands and used my victim to run back into the room before this one as the tool, lacking anything to hold him up, fell to the floor. I watched from a safe distance as he crawled into a corner, the confused and scared five year old still lingering on in his reaction.  
  
Nny at last reached the last of the multiple flights of stairs leading down to this room. His shirt had a rather comical phrase on it. "Prep. It's what's for dinner.", or something like that. He switched on the light, looked over to the wall and saw that his victim was missing. There was still one, however that was next to him that woke up.  
  
"What the? Hey! Where did your friend go?!", he asked her.  
  
"Huh?", she replied groggily. "Dillon's right there."  
  
"No he's not.", he said, holding up the empty chains. Dillon as she called him was still in the corner, unbeknownst to both of them. But the light made some consciousness return to him, just as I hoped it would. His eyes now opened completely and filled themselves with fiery hatred and the burning passion of revenge, locking themselves on their target as a fighter plane would on an enemy base. Dillon's hand reached over and felt around for a loose chain. Without lowering his gaze, he tightened his fingers around it.  
  
"This is it! I have him! He's as dead as the brain cells of a pothead! VICTORY!!", I thought to myself, so full of glee that I almost caused my victim to soil himself.  
  
Dillon got up as silently as possible and inched his way toward Nny, grinning as he readied his chain for a surprise attack.  
  
"Yes…yes…YES!!", I thought. I was almost completely convinced that my so carefully executed plans were about to succeed. But Johnny, having caught Dillon's reflection in his other victim's eye, turned around to face him. Dillon immediately wrapped the chain around Nny's neck and pinned him to the ground. Johnny struggled with little success as his airway was severely restricted and his face turned a zombie-like shade of purple. Dillon tightened the chain as Johnny's actions became weaker, his eyes lost the sparkle of life. They opened momentarily, giving futile last efforts to fight, but eventually closed. Finally his movements and breathing stopped altogether.  
  
Dillon finally loosened his grip on the chain that bound Johnny's neck and got up, walking to the door that would possibly lead him out of the nearly endless maze of rooms and halls of the basement.  
  
"Yes! I've done it!", I thought. However, I thought it best to wait in the shadows until the girl on the wall was asleep again. Then I would return my host to the bottom floor of the basement and make my exit when I returned to that room.  
  
"Hey! Aren't you going to help me or something? I think that guy has the keys to these chains in his pocket or something.", the girl on the wall asked Dillon.  
  
"No way. You heard me scream like a girl when he took us down here and electrocuted me! I wouldn't want to risk ruining my reputation."  
  
"Asshole."  
  
Ah, swearing. My favorite indicator of uncontrollable anger and fear. She stared at the ground beneath her, probably thinking about how she might never touch it again while still alive. Or something that I hadn't seen before, some cockroach crawling on the blood stained concrete. The silence was broken only by Dillon's footsteps and something else that I hadn't quite expected.  
  
Nny's body moved once more as life and air flowed back through it as would a gentle breeze through an open window. The chain around his neck loosened, he pulled it off and threw it while still holding onto one end so that the loose end wrapped around Dillon's ankle. The girl, apparently counting this as vengeance for leaving her there had not said anything to him though she had a clear view of Nny when he was on the ground. The chain pulled Dillon's leg back, and only giving him the time it took to fall to scream as he realized his fate was all but sealed, planted his head onto an inconveniently placed mass of upturned nails. Blood flowed freely in the room once more, placating the low, soft groans of protest of the wall that it seeped into and covered some letters on Nny's Prep shirt.  
  
"That reminds me. The wall needs more blood.", Nny said as he turned to leave.  
  
"Wait! I'm sorry Dillon made fun of you! I didn't agree with what he was saying, but I didn't want him to think that I wasn't cool. Can you please let me out?"  
  
"If you agree he was dumb, why would it matter what he thought of you?"  
  
"I just didn't want to be alone. If I could find people that weren't like him, I would. But they're just not out there. And if they are they have ninja hiding skills."  
  
"But wouldn't you rather be alone than be here? Now that your "friend" is gone I suppose you have the best, or worst of both worlds."  
  
"I guess. But could you please let me out? I'm sorry. I really mean that. I would do everything differently if only I had another chance."  
  
Finally, someone who knew where I was coming from. That's another one of the advantages of being free of the physical world. You're free of the constraints of time to a certain extent too. The only drawbacks are that you can only go back once, have to follow the normal sequence of time and can't directly prevent your own death. That was my original plan, but the one I was following was second best at least.  
  
"I doubt it. If you valued your life you would have thought about that before you got here. The wall needs more blood than he can provide, a constant fresh supply. You'll be here for a while, but if any of those theories about the afterlife are true, you'll be able to get out at some point."  
  
She didn't bother to protest further, seeing that it would amount to nothing. Nny turned off the light once again and exited the room, his footsteps fading with each clink of his steel toed boots.  
  
Silence reigned once again as my host and I descended the many steps and levels leading back down to his chamber. I regressed in his mind to a still controlling but lesser state of trance after he was locked back in his chains. I stayed a little longer, now unsure of events to come of the formulation of a new plan, but knowing there had to be another way. I did, after all have a year or so before Nny would even begin to suspect me of bringing about all of these mischievous changes on him and his past. 


	6. Weak and Powerless

Today was a half day, yet I stayed at school for an hour later than I would have if it was a full day. I don't get that. Want to know something that will make you puke like a cheerleader that's just eaten live cafeteria food? The truth is you don't. So I'm not telling you. What was I talking about? Oh. Yeah. I still don't own any of these characters. Hope you might have figured that out by now.  
  
Chapter 6: Weak and Powerless  
  
Dear DIEary,  
  
I don't know how this is happening or what's doing it, but something has gone horribly wrong that never should have happened. True, things went more how I wanted them to. But somehow I still think that it never should have happened that way. Devi. A name that seems so close, yet so distant. I killed her..two years ago probably. But it seems like I was with her just yesterday. That and my memories are conflicting over the date of death of some people in the basement. I know something's wrong, but who would have the ability or the motivation to do that? Okay, so everyone from the basement has a motivation to mess with my mind and make me crazier, if that's even possible. But who COULD do that? That crazy old guy didn't really know me. What is that Jimmy person? No, as annoying as it is he's made the mistake of idolizing me too much to do that. If it was him then my memories would have been altered to his advantage. And that leaves.Stan. His IQ isn't high enough to understand the phrase "give up already you mindless twit". But if he had the power to return from the dead and possess people before, I can't find a reason why he wouldn't do it now. Damn it. Death is never the end. ***********************************************************  
  
It's working. I can feel it. Johnny has been getting more and more depressed since my last encounter with him, much to my delight. Well, the times when he isn't taking it out in my host and therefore also harming me are enjoyable. My failed attempt at Johnny's life seems to have made no difference in the original course of events. It may have made him slightly more insane in the present or future, but the noise going on over me was no different than it would have been.  
  
Johnny still forgot to feed the wall monster with any of the blood he collected, instead killing himself. I left my host for a while to loosen the ropes binding another one of his victims on a higher level. He pried his way through the ceiling and floorboards up to the room that Dillon had died in. He could have just used the stairs, but then again this basement isn't MENSA headquarters. The monster began to break through. That was my cue to leave.  
  
**********************************************************  
  
Shortly before.  
  
"Attaching a gun to the phone? I've always thought that you should just kill yourself, but why not shoot yourself now? Before you change your mind. Please."  
  
"You're finally getting your way. Isn't this enough?"  
  
"But no one ever calls you. Don't pretend that you haven't tried to do this before. Get it over with before Eff draws you away again."  
  
"No! Nny! Don't listen to him! You don't have to do this! You don't WANT to do this! You know that no one will call. So the gun will never go off."  
  
Devi's dead and the voice known as Eff may end up winning. But I can't let that happen. Thank you telemarketer guise!  
  
"Will both of you just shut up?! YOU DON'T CONTROL ME! DON'T YOU KNOW THAT HALF THE REASON I'M DOING THIS IS TO GET AWAY FROM YOU?!?"  
  
Johnny got up, impaling the two walking Styrofoam forms on knives and accidentally set off the gun. Or it would have, but something delayed it.  
  
"What? Wow. That was lucky."  
  
*ring*  
  
Hello Cindy. I know what you did last summer.  
  
"But I'm not Cindy."  
  
*BANG*  
  
"Shit."  
  
Victory.  
  
************************************************************  
  
Yes, I know this chapter's short. But the last one was over 2,000 words so shaddup. No, wait. Nevermind. I'm just being deranged today. 


End file.
